


His Beautiful Detective

by hamish_adler_holmes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:40:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamish_adler_holmes/pseuds/hamish_adler_holmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson returns from the war never expecting what he will find when he agrees to a flat-share with the man named Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Beautiful Detective

John Watson had never really needed anyone else, or so the thought. He came back from the war and lived alone, plagued by memories. And he thought that no matter whether he was alone or not, that wouldn’t change.  
Until the day he was shouted after by Mike Stamford, and the old friends sat down for a coffee. Mike took him to St. Barts, where he met Sherlock Holmes, soon to be flat mate and the man that would change his life. The man was insane, maddening, extremely clever and beautiful in a whole new way.

The first few months they slept separately, and the cases were going well. Then Moriarty-the spider, the evil mastermind, the devil incarnate- tried to blow John up. The dreams came back and one night, John woke from a particularly bad one screaming. He tried to get out of bed, but his leg was seizing up and he crashed to the floor.

The beautiful man came running after John shouted for him, dressing gown on haphazardly. He took in the scene before him, and calmly leaned down to pick the shaking doctor off the ground. After laying him gently onto the bed, he climbed in after and gently rubbed his hands across John’s face and shoulders, shushing him and eventually pulling him into a warm embrace. After that night, Sherlock and John shared one bed, John spooned against his beautiful detectives slender chest, and the nightmares never came back.

Mrs. Hudson never questioned anything, simply locked off one of the bedrooms and brought more pillows. And then the touches happened in public, where Sherlock would casually wrap his arm around John’s waist, or kiss him on the head as he passed in the lab. The first time, John was shocked. Nobody but poor Molly reacted in any way.

The two men were never extremely touchy outside of the unlocked bedroom. But when they were alone, the touched. Oh, they touched. Sherlock’s beautiful long fingers, accustomed to gently cradling a violin, explored John, always careful and always soft. John loved the detective’s soft curls, and the long legs that would wrap around him and pull him close.

And eventually, after a particularly taxing case, the two men made love. John had never thought he would be that intimate with anyone after he got home. But after, when he lay against the pillows with Sherlock’s soft curls against his chest while John ran his fingers through them, he realized that he was happier than he had ever been. And the two men would make love many times after that, and John forgot the horrors that he had brought back. When he closed his eyes, a beautiful tall, dark haired man was all he saw. The blue eyes he was so often staring into swam across his vision as he slept.

There were a few times things got a little rough. Like with the Hounds of Baskerville case, where Sherlock thought he had drugged John and proceeded to lock him in a cage and make him think he was being attacked. Another was when The Woman came along, and he was almost sure that he had lost his beautiful detective, but after he realized that he was completely uninterested in women—and he hoped Sherlock was too—he knew that things would be okay. 

He felt bad for Sherlock sometimes, how people misjudged him. People were so quick to assume that Sherlock was a show-off, that he liked to hurt people, but John knew differently. He saw the look on his beautiful detective’s face when someone called him out, or when people called him names. And every time the look crossed his face, John wanted to shout at the person, tell them how wrong they were, he would tell them that he was just trying to fit in, that he never meant any harm. But he knew that would upset Sherlock, so he just comforted him on the way back to their flat, rubbing his back and murmuring sweet nothings into his ear and pulling him into their shared bed and doing his best to make him smile. There were some thing, like winning at Cluedo, that were sure to make his beautiful detective’s crooked smile show itself, and every time he managed to make him smile, John felt a sense of accomplishment that he was the one who finally did it, finally got to Sherlock Holmes.

And then things changed when Moriarty came back. Sherlock was so upset, soon John was the only one doing the comforting in the middle of the night when dreams shocked his beautiful detective awake. John would run his hands through the dark curls he so loved, whispering comforts to him until he felt the muscles in his back relax, and heard his breathing go deeper and slower. Then John would wrap his arms around Sherlock and he himself would drift off, and that would be the end of the dreams. For the night.

Then slowly, came the days where Sherlock would never come to the unlocked bedroom, simply pace the living room and glare at his skull, muttering “I owe you.” under his breath. And eventually, out came the key for Sherlock’s old room, where you could hear gunshots at all hours and where specimens made homes on top of the dressers, and the windows were cracked and dusty from all the experiments. 

Then John got the call. He went home as quick as he could, to realize it wasn’t real, that he had left his lover alone at the most desperate and wrong time. He got a cab back to Saint Barts as quick as he could, but as his phone rang and he got a sense that things were okay, he heard his beautiful detective telling him to look at the roof. And there, silhouetted against the darkening sky, was his love. His beautiful detective stood balanced on the ledge, and John knew there was nothing could do but try to calmly talk him down. He faintly heard his detective telling him it was all a lie, that he created Moriarty, that he was a fake. John brought up the first time they met, how Sherlock knew all about his sister.

“Nobody could be that clever.”

“You could.”

And he had done it again, had made his beautiful detective laugh, and in that moment there was a rush of joy so strong he hardly heard the next words, the words that jolted him to reality.  
“Goodbye, John.”

John screamed Sherlock’s name at the top of his lungs, begged into the phone for him not to jump, to stay, to come down, but he knew it was for nothing as he saw his beautiful detective throw his phone aside. So all he could do was watch as his best friend, his lover, his beautiful amazing detective flung himself from the roof. He ran as quick as he could on his numb legs, his ears ringing and his vision blurry, to see that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Sherlock had found a way to cheat death and John would push his way through the crowd and there his beautiful detective would be leaning on the wall waiting, telling him to hurry up. But as he saw the blood framing his favorite eyes and making the dark curls darker, he knew even before he felt for the pulse that was not there, that his detective was gone. Dead. He collapsed into people around him, then stood on his own and watched as they wheeled the body—no, he couldn’t call it a body that made it too real — wheeled his life away.

When he went home to Baker Street, he locked himself in Sherlock’s room. He ran his hands along the bullet holes, and when he couldn’t bear it anymore, he lay down in his beautiful detective’s empty bed. He pulled the sheets around him and buried his face into the pillows full of Sherlock’s scent. He didn’t sleep for days, only for fitful moments where he would wake screaming Sherlock’s name only to realize that there was nobody there to answer. He never went back to the room the two of them had shared, it was too empty.

He didn’t move any of Sherlock’s things, not at first. He believed for the longest time that maybe it wasn’t real, and that he would one day come home to find his beautiful detective stretched out on the sofa or leaping across the furniture, or curled into his favorite chair. John never understood how the man could bend his beautiful long legs up so small and make it look so graceful. But as the year came and Sherlock did not return, he had Mrs. Hudson lock the door to 221B Baker Street, and he found himself a new place. And with the door to the flat closed, so closed a door in the doctor’s heart.

And he found someone else, eventually. Someone who numbed the pain, who made it better for him, who would comfort him when he woke up screaming Sherlock’s name. With terror, John realized that one day, he had forgotten the color of his beautiful detective’s eyes or that he couldn’t remember the exact pitch of his laugh, and those were the worst days. He proposed to the woman who helped him, and she accepted, not knowing that this was something that John thought he would be doing with Sherlock. But he grew to really love the woman named Mary who healed his heart. Another door opened in the doctor’s heart, though Sherlock’s remained locked and splintered, and he let the woman named Mary in and he loved her almost as much as he had Sherlock. 

Then one day, before they were married, John sat with his fiancé at a restaurant for the first time in what felt like forever, needing a distraction from the video Lestrade had left at his house. He had watched the video, happy that Sherlock remembered how he liked the wink and smile. And as he looked up to the waiter to order, he met a pair of beautiful blue eyes not framed by blood, but by strong cheekbones, the same ones he had hit and kissed so many times, and the curls that could only belong to his beautiful detective, and he hoped that he was dreaming. He hoped that this was some horrible dream that he would wake up from and he could face the harsh reality without his detective and his new fiancé could help him. But he heard Mary gasp, and he knew that he was not dreaming, and first there was the urge to throw his beautiful detective against a wall and kiss him harder than he ever had, but what he did instead was throw a punch at the cheekbones he so loved.

He felt flesh and bone under his fist, and that angered him more, because as he suffered his detective had been alive, it had all been a trick. Anderson had been right, it wasn’t just something he had done to anger the doctor and poke fun at the not-so-dead detective, it was real, so real. And he was so mad, so close to crying and screaming and cursing, and all he could do was whisper one word.

“Why?”

And those blue eyes looked at him, and then away and back again and John saw doubt in his beautiful detective’s eyes, saw a sadness that John knew only he could help, so he grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the restaurant, momentarily forgetting the woman named Mary who numbed his pain, because the pain he felt now could only be helped by his beautiful detective. He unlocked the door to 221B Baker Street, to the room, and threw his beautiful detective down onto the bed. First there were cautious glances, awkward silence, and then his detective leaned his head up and kissed John, and that was all he needed. The familiar full lips against his own, and he was so happy, and he kissed his beautiful detective back, waiting to wake up from the dream. As he pulled away and struggled with the buttons on Sherlock’s jacket, he realized his detective was thinner, almost to the point where it seemed something was wrong. He looked up to see tears swimming in his detectives eyes, and he stopped cold. He wondered aloud if he had hurt the fragile man who had once been his savior, and as the man shook his head and broke down into tears, John knew not to ask but to just slide off of his beautiful detective and pull his head, his wonderful curly-haired head, down onto his shoulder and hold him close. The sobbing lasted so long, and John was so afraid, but later after the tears were gone and the kisses commenced, John asked again.

“Why?”

And his beautiful detective explained. The gunmen, the three gunmen, the one pointing his weapon at John. John felt a rush of compassion for his detective, and he pulled him so tightly against him he could hear the other man gasping for air. And as Johns own sobs stopped, the two started where they left off, in the unlocked bedroom, the beautiful detective and his broken doctor.


End file.
